[Jewelry making - Article 01283] - Re: [Orchid] My pickle turns my gold orange

[Peter W . Rowe]

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    Buy that sure sounds like your copper plating your gold.   That would
    be consistant with several things.  Not using boric acid and alcohol
    on the gold to prevent fire scale on the gold will put copper oxides
    into the pickle.  Then you'd need some metal baser than the copper in
    the pickle.  Something like iron or stainless steel tweezers or wire
    on which the gold is hung in the pickle.  The latter, iron, isn't the
    only thing that can do it.  Brass wire, for example, contains zinc,
    and that too can, more slowly, cause copper to plate out on the work.
     Try making sure only the gold goes into the pickle,  or if hung on a
    hook as many of us do, make sure it's clean copper, silver, or gold,
    rather than anything that might have a baser alloy.  Use a glass or
    plastic container for the pickle, not metal. 

    Generally, you can use the pickle until it's almost exhausted, by
    which point it will have turned a decided color, such as the sort of
    greenish tone if you work with a lot of white golds, or pale blue
    from copper oxides if you work sterling or ordinary gold alloys.  If
    it's still close to the original color, and still cleans off the
    oxides on the metal quickly enough, you should not need to change
    it. 

Peter

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